Woman unwittingly wears her own engagement ring for a year

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An Australian man may have outdone pretty much everyone when it comes to perfecting the marriage proposal. Using only first names, the man named Terry tells HuffPost the story of how he gave his girlfriend Anna a necklace on their one-year dating anniversary.

Using Huon pine, a wood native to Tasmania, he carved the necklace himself, and she wore it almost every day for the next year. What she didn’t know was that inside the necklace he’d hidden an engagement ring.

Flash forward to November 2016. They took a trip to Smoo Cave in Scotland, a place they’d talked about visiting since they first met.

On location, Terry asked for the necklace so he could take a photo of it. Secretly, he broke the seal she didn’t know was there with a knife.

With his camera rolling, Terry pulled the necklace out of his pocket, got down on one knee, cracked it open, and popped the question. After initial shock and confusion, Anna “finally worked out what had happened” and yelled “Yes!” before she “pounced on me,” he tells HuffPost.

Too sappy for you? She also kind of flipped out, saying: “It’s been in there the entire time? I could have lost it, you f—ing idiot!” Terry tells the Independent he had a few nervous moments along the way, too: At one point Anna considered trading the necklace with a blacksmith for some of his work.

They’re now saving to buy a house and hope to marry in it. Smoo, by the way, means “hiding place.” (This newborn helped his dad propose.)